Latest / ALL IN Kosciusko / State Of Kosciusko County

Transcript

State Of Kosciusko County · ALL IN Kosciusko

• 0:11
  Speaker 5: Welcome to the ALL IN Kosciusko podcast.
• 0:14
  Speaker 5: I'm your host, Matt Deuel.
• 0:16
  Speaker 5: Today we have a very special episode of the podcast for you.
• 0:19
  Speaker 5: On October 20th, our county commissioners held a special event right here at Lincoln Elementary School in Warsaw.
• 0:26
  Speaker 5: It was a state of the county event, an opportunity to communicate where the county has been, where it is today, and where it's headed in the future.
• 0:35
  Speaker 5: I had the privilege of moderating that conversation, and we are bringing it to you in its entirety here today.
• 0:42
  Speaker 5: So without further ado, let's get into the conversation.
• 0:45
  Speaker 5: Tonight we're going to spend some time talking about this place that we all share.
• 0:52
  Speaker 5: And we know that there is so much to be proud of here in Kosciusko County.
• 0:58
  Speaker 5: Just a year ago, the Indiana Chamber of Commerce named Kosciusko County the community of the year, and we are certainly so proud of that.
• 1:08
  Speaker 5: But we also know that there are a lot of opportunities facing us, challenges facing us, and tonight is all about just opening up that conversation.
• 1:18
  Speaker 5: And we're not going to be able to talk about every single topic.
• 1:22
  Speaker 5: Unfortunately, we won't be able to answer every single question, but I am excited to have just some open, honest conversation with our elected officials.
• 1:32
  Speaker 5: And we know that coming into this room, we don't all agree on everything, and that's okay, right?
• 1:37
  Speaker 5: That's what makes a community strong is having those different opinions and being willing to ask hard questions and have these kinds of conversations.
• 1:45
  Speaker 5: But I know that what we all agree on is that we desire to have Kosciusko County be a great place to live, work, raise our families, and build a future.
• 1:55
  Speaker 5: So tonight we're going to talk a little bit about where we've been, uh, where we are today, and then where we are going.
• 2:01
  Speaker 5: So to do that, I want to invite our panel to come on up and join us.
• 2:07
  Speaker 5: We've got uh Tony Ciriello here representing the council, Cary Groninger, Bob Conley, Sue Ann Mitchell, our commissioners.
• 2:14
  Speaker 5: Can you please give them a hand as they come up and join us?
• 2:17
  Speaker 5: So as they are getting settled in, uh what we're gonna do tonight is spend about 45 minutes uh together talking uh through the county's financial health, some important investments, some challenges that we're facing, and perhaps most importantly, where we want uh the county to head in the years ahead.
• 2:42
  Speaker 5: And the questions that I will be asking uh have come directly from you all, our community members.
• 2:48
  Speaker 5: So I want to thank you for uh those who sent in the questions and helped to shape tonight's conversation in such a big way.
• 2:56
  Speaker 5: Uh but after the conversation that we have up here, uh we will open up the gym floor for everybody to come down and you see all the different community tables that we have around the room.
• 3:06
  Speaker 5: Um we have some other uh elected officials and some other community leaders here to uh speak with you and for you to just lean in and speak a little bit more about some of the questions and topics that are meaningful to you.
• 3:21
  Speaker 5: So, as we get started, uh thank you all so much for doing this.
• 3:25
  Speaker 5: We appreciate you all.
• 3:27
  Speaker 5: And uh you all have given significant parts of your life and what it means to serve our community, and we're grateful uh for that.
• 3:33
  Speaker 5: So, what I would love to do as we start off is have each of you share what is something about Kosciusko County that you are just truly proud of.
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: Well, I can start out here this evening.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: First of all, thank you everybody for coming this evening.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: I mean, this is kind of the first time we've ever done anything like this as a county, and and excited to be able to put something on here and hopefully be able to really communicate and and even some point even educate just what our future looks like here in Kosciusko and just how blessed we are.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: But first of all, you know, grateful for the opportunity to live in Kosciusko County.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: You know, we have such a rich history of you know conservative leadership and employees in our in our county government that care about Kosciusko County, and we're such a unique place with that economic drivers of orthopedics, ag and the and the lakes, you know.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: It's just we kind of make the we're kind of a model county for so many uh in our state.
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: Um, so I just really think that it's we're just really blessed to be here.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: That's what I'm proud of.
• 4:34
  Speaker 5: Great.
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: Thanks, Cary.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: Well, it's hard to pick just one thing, so I have to kind of string a few together.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: So obviously, my bailiwick has always been the finances.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: So one thing I'm really proud of is our strong reserves of cash balances that we have as we face a lot of changes, which I'm sure we're gonna talk about a little bit later.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: But that coupled with the fact that our income tax is only at a 1% rate.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: Think about it, 1%.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: We are only one of about four counties in the state that has that low of an income tax rate.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: And many counties are much higher than what the new legislation is going to allow them to be able to collect.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: So they are really in a tough situation.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: I'm grateful that we have been good stewards of the money and that we are um able to take care of ourselves, and I think we can withstand the storm.
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: Thank you.
• 5:34
  Speaker 4: Thanks, Janet.
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: Thank you.
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: Um most of all, what I'm proud of is a community where you can raise a family without fear of being inundated with crime.
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: Um our law enforcement personnel in this county are second to none.
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: Uh you see them out in the roads all the time, day and night, no matter what the weather.
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: You call them.
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: You have an explosion down the road from your house, you call the uh your neighbor, and he says, I'm getting out of here.
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: And you call the police and they get in their car and run lights and siren to get there.
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: So that type of thing is living in a community.
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: They all do that.
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: We don't really give them a lot of credit for that.
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: But the the major the major thing in my life is my wife.
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: So we've been married 54 years, have three children, live in this community all our life.
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: I'm in business, I've been in business for 54 years.
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: Um that type of thing doesn't just happen overnight.
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: And you have to be secure and safe and know that what you when you leave the house in the morning, there's a more than even tremendous sense that you'll be going back home at night.
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: And in a lot of communities, you can't do that.
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: In my business, we get people moving in here on a daily or on a weekly basis, that they uh they come from Chicago, they come from Detroit, they come from New York, from from California.
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: They're coming in here weekly because they do their research and they find out what kind of community we live in.
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: They look at the stats, they look at what we do here fiscally, the way we handle things, and we're a very attractive community.
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: So that's uh that's what I'm from.
• 7:14
  Speaker: I think for me, I grew up in the Indianapolis area, moved up here in 1981 for employment purposes.
• 7:20
  Speaker: And when I moved up here, I had a choice of 14 counties in which to live in.
• 7:25
  Speaker: And after touring those 14 counties and having people have discussions with me about their county, um, how it operates, those kind of things, I chose to settle in Kosciusko County.
• 7:38
  Speaker: I think one of the main deciding factors I had in that was the stability that this county has.
• 7:45
  Speaker: I mean, we've had great leadership over the years.
• 7:49
  Speaker: Um, I know stepping in the role on the council, as the rest of us have, stepping into these roles, we've always had big shoes to fill.
• 7:57
  Speaker: But I think the stability of our county government, whether it be at the commissioner level, council level, township level, and so on, has been a stable driving force in this community to keep us where we're at financially, economically, and allows us the opportunity to face challenges without bankrupting our county.
• 8:22
  Speaker: Um so I'm very proud of the stability we have in this community, and I think it shows with the new businesses we're bringing in.
• 8:29
  Speaker: Thank you.
• 8:30
  Speaker 5: Excellent.
• 8:31
  Speaker 5: So we are uh on on the handout that you all got as you came in, there's some great uh just fun facts about the the county.
• 8:41
  Speaker 5: Um and as you see on there, we are Indiana's fifth largest county with 531 square miles of land, over 10,000 acres of lakes, over 1,100 uh miles of county road, which puts us third uh in miles in terms of the state.
• 8:58
  Speaker 5: What does it take to serve and maintain a county of this size?
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: I'll start.
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: Um personnel, the people out on the road that are doing the work, uh the county highway department, not not to uh take anything away from the other departments that they do like drainage, that type of thing.
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: But uh you you you don't give much thought to it in the wintertime.
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: It's January 10th, and and uh there's 40 mile an hour winds outside, and we have six inches of snow, and these guys are out there at two, three o'clock in the morning clearing the roads so we can go to work and keep the economy moving.
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: We don't give that much thought.
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: And in the summertime, you know, July uh 10th, it's 90 degrees outside, and we're in air conditioning.
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: These guys are out in their trucks uh laying asphalt, cleaning the roads, uh uh seal coating or sealing the roads and chipping, chip and sealing the roads.
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: And so um that type of thing, that type of involvement by our employees, that dedication uh throughout all the departments, um, I think is what keeps us going.
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: Makes us special.
• 10:06
  Speaker 5: That's great.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: And I guess the only thing that I'd say to add to that is just, you know, not only do we have over 1,100 miles of road, but we have 110 bridges, 369 small structures, 1,050 miles of county drain.
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: I mean, you you just look at the magnitude that it takes for of that infrastructure to be maintained by our people.
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: Uh, you know, with a county highway of 37 employees, you know, when you look at the number of miles they have to cover, even plowing snow, like you talked about, you know, we have 30 snow plow routes that they they have to cover.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: So that's 40 miles that each person is responsible for to get the snow off of.
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: Well, it's not just one pass, you're making multiple passes to get that whole roadway clean.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: As well as I think the other thing that are to try and keep up with all that infrastructure, I know uh we do at the highway department we do a PACER rating, which we rate our roads every year, getting an idea of the money that we're investing in our roads.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: Are they meeting the requirements to continue to better our roads and get higher quality?
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: And I know the surveyor's office is doing the same thing to implement something really similar with our ditch system to understand where do we need to be targeting investing in our county ditches and drains to make them, you know, last us for many decades to come.
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: So it's just really cool to see how all our departments really lean in to be able to maintain the infrastructure we have because we have a lot of it.
• 11:26
  Speaker 5: Great, great.
• 11:27
  Speaker 5: Okay, so Sue Ann, I want to start with you on the financial picture.
• 11:31
  Speaker 5: I know it's an area that you care deeply about with your years of service on the council and now as a commissioner.
• 11:38
  Speaker 5: Uh the handout that everyone has list 46.4 million in combined county reserves.
• 11:44
  Speaker 5: Several people have asked, what does that figure actually represent?
• 11:47
  Speaker 5: And how would you describe the financial health of the county?
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: Well, I think, excuse me, I think the primary thing that it represents is that we have had people in places that have been very frugal, have looked after the taxpayers' money, and have actually been planning for things that we know are forthcoming.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: Obviously, being able to have a crystal ball would be better, but we don't have a crystal ball, so we've had to try to shoot for where we believe that we need to be.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: We have a lot of things that are different funds, and trying to understand that is really very, very difficult because they come from lots of different places.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: So we wind up on the sheet that you have.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: It shows that we have about $15 million in edit funds, and that's to cover capital improvements plans, things that we have on the list of things that we believe are perhaps going to happen that we need to have money laid by for.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: Again, having a crystal ball, but we can't buy a crystal ball with that $15 million.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: So we have to try to be responsible and make good decisions and plan as we go.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: We have a capital improvements plan that goes out to 27, and every year it's extended and extended, along with a longer plan of various different projects that have been discussed.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: Some of what we're doing with that $15 million, KEDCO has become a great partner with us, and so we are giving them money to take care of our economic development, work on that with many of the businesses, and we thank them for our ability to have gotten the businesses that we have in the community.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: And then we've also created a special projects fund for them to be able to do additional things that are also actually reaching out to other communities, to not local communities, far-out communities.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: And I would be very remiss also if we didn't mention that today Peggy presented the the commissioners with the award from a year ago, almost a year ago now.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: But when we received, the county received, and I believe, Peggy, you mentioned that counties usually don't get that.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: Normally it's a municipal award, and that Kosciusko County received that award, not because of any one of us up here.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: It was all of us together, everybody in the county, every small municipality, the cities, the towns, the township, everybody working together to try to make our townships and our towns and everything in our county to be stellar, to try to get people to come here, to try to encourage people to move here.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: So I think that that was something, a proud moment for all of us today.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: So thank you to KEDCO for that award.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: Another thing that we've we've worked on, you know, we've had some meetings with Warsaw City about the airport, and so we decided that we would make matching grants.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: So we're not just giving money, we are setting aside what that money is to be used for.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: We've given them a couple of rounds to try to pave the runways.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: We helped to believe financially with trying to move the poles that I believe they had taken, they didn't take.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: The state had drugged their feet for 49 years, I believe it's been said, in order to finally move those poles.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: So we are making progress, and we're great to be able to partner with them to try to make those kind of things happen that can also improve what we're doing with other businesses within the community.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: Moving to the general fund.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: The general fund um $31 million is what we have there.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: I want to back up just a minute.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: How many of you have been past the justice building lately and saw that there's still a darn fence sitting out there?
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: Well, nobody knows what a struggle it is to try to fix things when they're broke like that.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: You have to do a study, you have to get somebody to put together a packet for you in order to make a bid.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: You have to do the bid.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: Once you've done the bid, then you've got to figure out what the right group is to do it.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: And that has taken a lot of time.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: We have not drug our feet.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: I don't believe we have drug our feet anywhere along the line.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: It's just that these things take time, especially when they are not predicted.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: If anybody would have told us that pieces of the justice building were gonna fall down, I don't think any of us would have ever believed it.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: It was some kind of a fluke thing that happened, and so we are stuck with having to pay to repair it.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: We're getting closer, we're getting closer.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: We we have a contract signed, and now we just have to wait on the right time for them to get the materials.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: Think about this that limestone on the front of the building.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: That doesn't just fall off of trees.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: We want it to match.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: We don't want it to look like we fixed it like uh a tar paper.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: We want to be sure that it it meets our our criteria and our quality for our community.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: That's the other thing that is the unknown, the fear of the unknown.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: We've had a few of those things, obviously.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: Moving into the general fund.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: The general fund, the county can sustain our obligations because we do have a good balance.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: And the the council this last year, this this year, in their budget uh committee meetings, they did a great job of trying to ratchet back a little bit of money.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: And I think that's great.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: But we are we are in a position where we can be safe and sound knowing what is coming or the fear of the unknown of what's coming to finish out the rest of Senate Bill One.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: We know that that is going to be a huge change.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: We've got two more years before what was approved in Senate Bill One is actually going to come into fruition.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: And so we know that we have at least two, probably three more legislative sessions before we really get down to the the deep details of it.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: Well, you can't plan today for something that you don't know how it's gonna end up.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: So the fact that we have money laid by, I think will be our total salvation.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: And while that might look like a lot of money to have in reserves, that's not gonna be a whole lot of money in order to be sure that we are solvent.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: The other piece of the puzzle is the fact that we have a 1% sales tax or sales tax income tax, and the fact that the maximum that can be collected altogether is only 2.9 percent when we switch over.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: That's big.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: Many counties have rates higher than that, along with great debt, and that's going to be another stumbling block for a lot of different counties.
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: Just so you know, the county's share thirty-three, four hundred and twenty-one thousand dollars, fourteen million one hundred and sixty-seven thousand dollars with the balance of the funding going to townships, that's what comes in from income tax.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: So the county gets about fourteen million of that, and the the balance of the thirty-three million is spread to cities, towns, townships, and to the libraries.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: So that's a great spreading of of the money, which has been very beneficial.
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: Um that's great.
• 19:44
  Speaker 5: Sue Ann, if I can, I want to jump over to Tony here for just a moment.
• 19:48
  Speaker 5: Um Tony, with with that, and I know you're just scratching the surface.
• 19:53
  Speaker 5: You got a whole you got a whole file there.
• 19:55
  Speaker 5: Um, but having financial stability um is great.
• 19:59
  Speaker 5: But how do we, you know, as the council decide when to save, when to invest.
• 20:07
  Speaker: So many of you in this room were like me, were raised by parents who taught you how to save money.
• 20:12
  Speaker: You have to have something to fall back on in case of that emergency, and let's talk about the the collapse of the justice building being an emergency we did not plan on.
• 20:21
  Speaker: If we weren't in the financial shape we we are and have the reserves we have, we'd be struggling to pay for that.
• 20:31
  Speaker: We'd have to figure out another way to pay for it, dip into budgets more, whatever we needed to do.
• 20:37
  Speaker: But because we've been financially responsible, and the people before us have been financially responsible, we have that savings account that we can now fall back on to allow us to take care of these emergencies that arise.
• 20:51
  Speaker: One of the things that that I'm very proud of with this community, and I know these other three are, and the rest of the council members are as well, is that Kosciusko County in itself is debt-free.
• 21:02
  Speaker: We don't have any bonds to speak of.
• 21:05
  Speaker: There are a couple of bonds out there for companies, but those companies are making the bond payments.
• 21:10
  Speaker: We're not on the hook for those.
• 21:12
  Speaker: So we we are basically a debt-free community.
• 21:15
  Speaker: So if we would lose funding for something like what Senate Bill One is potentially going to do for us, they're not actually gonna reach into our pocket and take money away.
• 21:26
  Speaker: They're just gonna give us less than what we got before.
• 21:29
  Speaker: And so that creates a struggle on the council side to where do we make up those losses.
• 21:35
  Speaker: I know there's talk in in the original Senate Bill One and some revisions may be coming out about changes in the lit tax to make up some of that stuff, but also we have these coffers set aside to take care of those.
• 21:49
  Speaker: Um being on the council, as the other council members would tell you, is is really a tough, tough job.
• 21:58
  Speaker: I mean We are seven people who are looking at these numbers provided to us by the state, by each department head, by the townships, by the libraries, to determine what kind of spending we can do, where we have to cut the line, but we also have to continue to save for future.
• 22:21
  Speaker: Because with the lost revenue potential again from Senate Bill One, we don't know what that's going to look like.
• 22:26
  Speaker: We've got to have something to fall back on.
• 22:29
  Speaker: I know that none of us really want to raise a lit tax unless it was absolutely necessary in a in a last resort.
• 22:36
  Speaker: But if we can depend on these savings accounts we have, that makes a difference.
• 22:41
  Speaker: So every penny we save when we do budget cuts, when we do budget sessions, may not seem like a lot in the overall scope, but every penny we save help cut, helps us save for more for the future and for the benefit of your families, your children, and grandchildren as we go down the road.
• 23:01
  Speaker 5: Great.
• 23:01
  Speaker 5: Thank you.
• 23:02
  Speaker 5: Speaking of things that we don't plan for, we had a community member ask a question about emergency preparedness.
• 23:09
  Speaker 5: Um can the county provide information on its level of preparedness for natural disasters, including emergency response capabilities, evacuation procedures, communication systems, and available community resources.
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll kind of jump in on that one.
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: So, you know, we have a emergency emergency emergency management director and a full-time uh person underneath them.
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: So we have two full-time employee people that for the county that that's what their job is, is to help us be prepared for whatever might come our way.
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: You know, our guiding foundation for the county in those areas we've created.
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: I know there's gonna be a lot of acronyms here, but we have an EOP, which is our emergency operation plan, which is kind of how when we have an emergency, what's the plan?
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: How does how does it play out?
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: And then we also have an MHMP, which is our multi-hazard mitigation plan.
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: So we we have these different plans that we've set out, and then not only do we have these plans, but on an annual basis, we do hands-on and table track tabletop exercises to make sure we know how those are going to play out as as things would possibly come our way.
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: So, you know, I think we're doing a really great job of trying to prepare for that.
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: I think the other thing that we've done and an investment that we've made, I think it's a little bit of a time here to toot our horn on, you know, we've made a huge investment in the last few years in our public safety communication system.
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: This was a system that uh when we when we when we started this process, you know, we had the inability for our public safety, our fire, our police, AMS, highway, EMAs to be able to talk with one another across the whole county.
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: And uh, you know, we spent about six million dollars of our ARPA funds.
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: So that's some of the reason of our edit funds even being at the level that they're at.
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: We received during COVID, there was monies that was distributed to most all counties and municipalities.
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: And we were very uh frugal in how we use those ARPA dollars to fund some of the projects that we had earmarked for our edit dollars.
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: So that's some of the reason we were able to get our our edit balance up to what it was.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: But we funded a four-tower system with a tower at our highway department, Dewart Lake, Claypool, and Sydney, as well as 721 radios in our county over 28 different departments.
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: So it was truly an investment that touched every department, every part of our county, uh, that you know serves us well for years to come to be able to communicate because there's nothing worse to show up on an emergency situation, and you can't even communicate back to dispatch for support or know what's even going on.
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: So it was something that we really needed to do, and I feel like we've made great strides as a county trying to prepare for for those emergencies.
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: Excellent.
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: Thank you for that.
• 25:52
  Speaker: Um if I may chime in on us for just a quick second.
• 25:55
  Speaker: The emergency communication system that was built and put into place with those towers.
• 26:00
  Speaker: Um Chris McCann sitting over there, uh, been around not quite as long as I have, but close enough because I come out of the law enforcement community.
• 26:09
  Speaker: We know when there were certain areas in this county, if we went, we were not gonna be able to get back up to us because our radios weren't gonna work.
• 26:18
  Speaker: We needed an ambulance for somebody, our radios weren't gonna work.
• 26:22
  Speaker: You were down there on your own.
• 26:24
  Speaker: Um, because of the forethought of the commissioners to do this, now they don't have those spots in this county that create this safety issue for our for our police officers right out there doing our job.
• 26:38
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: If I might add, um I've been on the Sheriff's Reserve Force for 52 years.
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: And we're now, I'm just the last couple nights, been going through training to supplement with the Sheriff's Department, the same kind of training that our local emergency uh preparedness people have done.
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: So they come into a situation as emergency preparedness people.
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: The Sheriff's Department and all their personnel are trained.
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: There's five different areas that come into play when we have uh the human aspect of what happens in our community when people are uh have have issues and you have to deal with them on a one-to-one basis.
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: We're trained on ways you can approach people to calm them down just by the way you look, by the way you don't look, by the way you walk up to them, the distance you stay away from them, little things like that that we're being trained on at the sheriff's department to help in emergency situations aren't always tornadoes or or uh explosions or fires.
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: Sure.
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: It's that human aspect.
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: And we're we're really proud under Jim Smith's leadership to be able to bring that to fruition, and all the reserves and full-time people are being trained right as we speak online with that kind of training.
• 27:52
  Speaker 5: Yeah, great, great.
• 27:54
  Speaker 5: Well, one thing I love about the county is the diversity of our communities, each with their own personality, history, and opportunities.
• 28:00
  Speaker 5: And Cary, you often refer to it as the communities being like different flavors of ice cream.
• 28:06
  Speaker 5: And there have been some intentional investments in those communities.
• 28:10
  Speaker 5: Um, would love to hear from you all.
• 28:12
  Speaker 5: Why have partnerships and investments in places like Mintone, Pearston, Milford, Claypool, and Sydney been priorities?
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: You know, the over the last four years we've really leaned into our small communities.
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: You know, we we hired Amy Rowe, which is here tonight, and she's our first uh community coordinator.
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: You know, she acts as though that liaison between our small towns and county government that's just really opened up those lines of communication with our small towns of what they need and how can we help.
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: Uh, you know, she helped walk us through the whole help program, which was our Hoosier Enduring Legacy Plan, that really helped identify what were some important projects for our small towns and how could we really create uh help them to be able to get those done.
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: And I think the big thing that we had with that as we as we looked at that is just if if we see these small towns were struggling and we just wanted to try and find out ways that we could really help them.
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: And we've had some great partners along the way, MACOG and OrthoWorx, and KEDCO and OCRA and K-21.
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: You know, thank you, thank you to all of them that's that's helped us with some of these projects that we have going on in these small communities that we really feel like uh these small communities are are could be a real bright spot for our community or for our county, and we we want to be able to promote them any way we can.
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: So great.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: And I would like to share that in North Webster we have a wonderful community center.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: We're trying to get those same thoughts out to various other communities so that they can pull their community together and have that cohesiveness.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: We wound up with a school that we paid a dollar for.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: I happen to sit on that board, and I've been on that board for 10 years.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: We have completely redone almost everything in the building due to grants that we were able to get, but also very generous donors, and communities sincerely appreciate that.
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: We have indoor pickleball, outdoor pickleball, we have cardio drumming, we have every kind of exercise, anything, whatever.
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: We have a YMCA in there.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: So, I mean, those kind of things in a community are a wonderful drawing card.
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: I went to Silver Lakes grand opening when they were uh awarding their their um plans for their community center.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: And what an exciting, exciting day for them.
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: And I I would love to see that happen in every community, have a community center where their people could gather.
• 30:38
  Speaker 5: Great.
• 30:38
  Speaker 5: Very good.
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: I'd like to thank the the Curlin family for their involvement in Silver Lake.
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they're that's the seed that's been planted that hopefully with the the proper nourishment and and care it'll grow into a community center like North Webster.
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: We we lost a big hunk of our lifestyle and our way of life when the high schools left small towns.
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: I mean, you could just watch small towns wither on the vine and and dry up.
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: People move to areas where they could uh their schools were, where their kids could get involved with uh with sports and and activities at school.
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: That was a big part of what took uh our small towns down.
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: But they've opened a school in Claypool that's back open, and these small towns they thrive on that type of thing.
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: And we need to promote that and nurture that as much as we can.
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because those families are leaving the small towns to go to the larger towns or cities to work.
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: Yes, and small towns have become more or less a bedroom community.
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: They come home at night, they eat supper, and they do what they do in the evening.
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: But uh if we can find some way to to uh multiply our hands in those small towns, like uh I grew up in Pearston and we everything was sports, everything was a high school, junior high, grade school.
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: Everybody came together every night at school for something, but that's just not happening to the extent that it used to.
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's tough.
• 31:59
  Speaker 5: Now, and Bob, you bring up a great point.
• 32:01
  Speaker 5: Our handout shows that since 2010, our community's grown 4.6 percent in population, but the latest census shows that that's true of four of our communities.
• 32:13
  Speaker 5: So so we're seeing that growth in four of our 14 communities.
• 32:17
  Speaker 5: Um, why should residents care about our small communities, whether they are shrinking or growing?
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think when we look at our small communities, I mean, just another fact to kind of throw out there to bore you with another fact, but you know, those those other 10 communities that are not growing in our in our county here in the last census in 2020, those small towns averaged an 8.3% population loss.
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: You know, so I mean just let that sink in a little bit to to almost lose 10% of a population of a community in 10 years is is not a not a good scenario.
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: And I think that that's something that we really have to take a hard look at because the the problem of that is as the population in these small towns do decrease, I mean, that tax base is also decreasing.
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: And we all know what things are doing around us.
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: I mean, cost of living continues to go higher, operating costs continue to go higher.
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: So that causes an even heavier burden burden on those remaining residents that you know not only impacts the residents there, but the schools, the local government, the businesses.
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: The list kind of goes on and on.
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: So it's really everyone's best interest for those small communities to stay self-sustaining, you know, and that's by you know, and let them add value to our community, you know, through whether we can invest in them in housing or amenities or things that we can really increase the population of those small towns is just critical.
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: And I think we know the impact of housing that is not well kept in those communities, and so trying to do something to improve that.
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: The county is looking at a land bank concept which may or may not be able to help that piece of the puzzle.
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: How many of you saw the tax sale advertisement in the newspaper?
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: They had the tax sale Monday at the courthouse and the same people are on there that were on there when I was a county assessor more than 30 years ago.
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: So many of them have been frequent flyers, and the the hope with the land bank and and MACOG working with them as a partner is will be to try to get some of those properties reversed, cleaned up, and get them to where they can be marketable.
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: The other thing is, you know, we have buildings that are beyond the capabilities of people living in them.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: And those are the other pieces of the puzzle that we can help some of the smaller communities as well as people places out in the county, those buildings that need to be addressed and cleaned up and can be turned around for for housing for people as well.
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: That's great.
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: I think everybody wants to live in an atmosphere like Mayberry, right?
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: Aunt B and Apple Pie and Opie and the kid taking his nickel from him so he can't have his milk at lunchtime.
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: Um that's a good concept.
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: It's a wholesome atmosphere.
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: It's it's it's family and it's uh uh and it's um just the a way of life I think everybody would love to have.
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but that's not possible for everybody.
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: But I think if these small towns were to adopt that kind of an attitude and try to build on that and expand, um a lot of the farmers around these small towns uh you know towns can't can't grow if they can't uh annex and and uh and expand.
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: But agriculture is a big thing in our county, and we protect agriculture to the extent that we can.
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: And so I think that's a big thing.
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: If we can get that thought process uh turned around and have them invest in themselves, in their community, in their town, and do things in the community after school weekends to help themselves, I think that'd be great.
• 36:03
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 36:04
  Speaker 5: Another element of investing in the community is when companies come in and choose to invest in the county.
• 36:11
  Speaker 5: What do investments involving companies like Slate Auto and AutoCAM tell us about the opportunities that we have here?
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: You know, I guess I would say about that.
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: I know Dan's here this evening from Slate Auto.
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: Appreciate him being here this evening, but maybe it's a question we need to ask him.
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: But you know, I think that uh, you know, having a we have a very desirable workforce here in our community.
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: Uh, you know, we have our good Midwest uh values of working hard and and and wanting to do a good job, but I think it it reminds us that we just have to continue investing in talent creation, retention, and attraction.
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: You know, companies need that talent to be able to drive their their business forward.
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: You know, if they can't hire those people and and have a place for them to live, you know, then you know it's really tough for businesses to want to locate in our community.
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: So I think it's just key when we look at how where we're making strategic investments as we look to the future, you know, we're gonna have to make those investments and some of those things that that you know make people want to live here because if we don't have the employees for those employers to employ, they're not coming.
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: So yeah.
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: And I think the other important part about that is training.
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: So if we could encourage our high schools and and Grace College, and I know they are doing some of this, but to get into more technical type uh training so that many times kids could finish with their high school and be ready to go to work someplace, have those skills.
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: Um, I grew up and was born and raised in Madison County, Anderson, where General Motors was.
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: And when General Motors left, they took 22,000 jobs with them.
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: Think about that a minute.
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: When I was a kid in high school, if you graduated from high school, they would hire you, they would even pay to educate you.
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: And many of the people that I went to high school went to college through General Motors.
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: Think about losing that, and that's what's always in the back of my mind with the orthopedic industry.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: We cannot here in Warsaw, Indiana, lose our orthopedic industry.
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: We have got to support them.
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: We have got to see that we are doing things that can help them to retain their employees.
• 38:28
  Speaker 3: We can go back to when I was in high school.
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: There's one man in our high school here, it's the old Lakeview Middle School, used to be the high school.
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: One man in that whole building that made the orthopedic industry what it is today.
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: Forrest Kroup.
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: Does anybody here have him for a shop teacher?
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: He he taught the kids how to use uh lathes, drills, uh eventually into C and C lath.
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: And those kids went directly from graduation to Zimmer, make Zimmer what they are today, uh, based on his that one man and his teaching them uh in the classroom at high school.
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: So that's an asset that is there.
• 39:06
  Speaker 3: I think we need to get back to that to to piggyback on what Sue Ann said.
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: And uh I think that's gonna it's scary to think that we could lose those kind of jobs like they did at Anderson.
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: But believe me, with from the council and everybody else, uh we're working diligently to try to keep that from happening.
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: I know when Slate said they were coming here, um, they had some things they thought they needed.
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: And we got with the highway department and uh we redid the highway out in front of uh the old Donnelly's building, the Slate Building.
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: We widened it, put in DXL lanes and turn lanes, and NIPSCO went in and put a new gas line under the road.
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: I know if you live out in the Atwood area or out west of town, you put up with that uh for quite a while.
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: It took NIPSCO a long time to get that gas line put under the road.
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: And uh so that's that's that's huge.
• 39:57
  Speaker 3: Get that education back and uh try to promote that.
• 40:01
  Speaker: That's great.
• 40:01
  Speaker: Tony, do you have something to add?
• 40:03
  Speaker: Yeah, I think um you mentioned AutoCAM and Slate coming here.
• 40:07
  Speaker: We don't know what may be coming in the future, and we're hoping to attract more businesses in the future, but I think one of the things that probably brought Slate and AutoCAM here goes back to my initial statement the stability of this county.
• 40:20
  Speaker: The orthopedic companies have been here for years and years, and they're here to stay, as far as we know.
• 40:26
  Speaker: So they look at those kind of things.
• 40:28
  Speaker: The conversations I've had with a couple of folks at Slate, they said, you know, not only the orthopedic staying here, the retention of them being here, but the financial stability of the county is something else they looked at because they don't want to move into a county and use Slate for an example and bring roughly 2,000 jobs for a county that can't afford to provide them the infrastructure that they may need in the future.
• 40:54
  Speaker: So we have to look at the overall picture of them coming here, not just because we're uh a great community, we have great people here, but we uh we have that financial security that they're looking for, we have the resources they're looking for, we have the emergency services that they're looking for, where we got the responses, um, the emergency responses, again, going back to the EMA that that um Cary mentioned earlier, all that's in place, and Slate looked at all that.
• 41:23
  Speaker: AutoCAM's probably looked at all that too, coming into this community saying, yeah, this is a good place for us to bring our business and bring these between the two of them, what, 2,500 jobs, um, which is tremendous for this community.
• 41:38
  Speaker 5: Yeah, excellent.
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: I've been on a couple tours through Slate, and those people and their personnel from the head right on down, we've had them all, they're the head person around the table with us.
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: And man, they are the they got a fire in their belly for Warsaw and Kosciusko County.
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: They want to be here, they want to hire people here, they want to build families here, and that's a big part of what they emphasize is they want to be family.
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: And and uh you talk to any of their employees, step, uh talk to somebody at the restaurant that's got a slate t-shirt on.
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: You see slate t-shirts all over this community now.
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: We were out to lunch the other day, and there's two guys in there that had slate t-shirts on.
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and and they'll tell you it's from the employee that came in the in the door that just needed a job uh right up to the very top.
• 42:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they're hot about Kosciusko County and being here.
• 42:27
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 42:27
  Speaker 5: Well, the economic diversity is certainly encouraging and exciting.
• 42:31
  Speaker 5: But we know that sometimes with the biggest opportunities are connected to some of the biggest challenges.
• 42:35
  Speaker 5: And someone asked that question what is the most significant problem or challenge that the county is facing either now or in the next few years, and what is being done to address it?
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: Well, I have about five, but the biggest the biggest one that far out is probably gonna be US 30 and what we can do to get the state to look at US 30 and realize that something has got to be done.
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: We have worked on that a lot with NDOT.
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: Um, we had conversations with them.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: Some of us found papers back to 1996 trying to encourage them to do something different for US 30.
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: We also um looked at the the future.
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: They thought they might be able to do J turns for us by 2030 something.
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: So it was down the road.
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: And we managed to, and I think Bob probably wants to talk about that, but we have got to get the legislators' attention, we've got to get somebody in Indianapolis to understand that U.S.
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: 30 has got to be reckoned with.
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: I I just know that if that was sitting around this an Uh, butting the circle in Indianapolis, that would have been done 30 years ago and we'd be moving on by now.
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: We we had a meeting with NDOT.
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: The head lady from NDOT came up because we were creating quite a squeaky wheel.
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: And she brought people with her that was her yes people, you know, they're gonna go along with what she wanted done.
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: And and this one guy, he was just bound determined we were gonna have J turns because that reduces automobile accidents at a J-turn by 80 some percent.
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: And so I was talking to people in Whitley County, and they've got a J turn there, Koesi.
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: If you've ever gone to Fort Wayne, you've gone through there.
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: And they're scared to death to use it.
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: Our uh people in our community that are the less vulnerable and the farmers, they can't use J-turns.
• 44:48
  Speaker 3: You got a uh Mr.
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: Irwin up here, you get a 40-foot piece of equipment going down the road, you got a tractor with with eight wheels on it.
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: You you can't get it in the median, let alone get it down the highway under high-speed traffic going eastbound, and then you got to stop in the middle and deal with high-bound tra uh high-speed traffic going back westbound, and you want us to send our families and horse and buggies and the less vulnerable across that kind of thing.
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: That's just idiotic.
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: And we sat there and we told them so.
• 45:18
  Speaker 3: Warsaw City Mayor, their uh uh area, their Plan Commission people, and their representatives from the city and the county, we were steadfast in what we wanted, and we weren't going to settle for anything less.
• 45:31
  Speaker 3: No, Marshall County did just the opposite.
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: They went with J turns, they they won them.
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: So um I think uh overall, I think we'll we'll find out that it's in our best interest not to do that.
• 45:42
  Speaker 3: I know my wife and I was coming back from Fort Wayne here this last uh this last winter.
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: We were westbound there at Koesi, and there's a semi in the middle trying to make a turn to come back to Koesi turnoff.
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: And when he made his turn, we were in the left lane, and their trailer came back into the lane that we were in.
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: And the driver to the right of me saw that happening, got out of the way, and we were able to move over so we didn't rear-end that semi.
• 46:09
  Speaker 3: But it was there, I mean, instantaneously.
• 46:12
  Speaker 3: We had to make some fancy moves to keep from rear-ending that semi.
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: And I gave them that information, and they touted it, like, oh well, there's they're safe, they're just safe.
• 46:21
  Speaker 3: And uh, but we worked together at the city to see that uh we didn't get those.
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: MACOG was a big player in that.
• 46:27
  Speaker 3: Uh, they came together and helped us get that done.
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: You know, one one sobering fact on on the US 30, when you look at the crash data on US 30 uh over the last four years, we've averaged one life-altering accident crash every other month on US 30 just in Kosciusko County.
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: So, just to give you an idea of just how frequently there's a life-altering crash that's happening on US 30, it's it's it's sobering to think about the lives that's been lost.
• 46:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 46:59
  Speaker 5: Certainly an issue that uh I know you all will continue to wrestle through and look forward to hearing more about that.
• 47:04
  Speaker 5: Um, I'm gonna skip ahead just a little bit just for time.
• 47:08
  Speaker 5: Um, we had several residents submit questions about data centers.
• 47:12
  Speaker 5: Um, I chose this question from Jennifer that I think captures uh the heart of all the questions that were sent in.
• 47:17
  Speaker 5: Other counties in Indiana have a moratorium on data centers.
• 47:21
  Speaker 5: Will you be implementing one in our county?
• 47:24
  Speaker 5: If not, will the public be able to give input before any agreements are signed and not done secretly with NDAs?
• 47:31
  Speaker 5: We need to prioritize projects that support our community's health and cost of living.
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: We were in the public with our with the uh data centers.
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: We had public meetings, we opened our commissioners' meetings up.
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: Uh, we were out in front.
• 47:47
  Speaker 3: We didn't try to hide anything.
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: If we knew it, we tried to disseminate it to the public, make it available to them.
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: We even uh my wife and I went to a a church uh in Clunet one night, they had a meeting, they invited us, and the church was full of people, and and we listened to them.
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: That's they didn't want data centers, especially where they wanted to put it.
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: I have no problem putting a data center in an I-3 area where it's large enough to handle it, and they've got electricity to handle it, and water enough to handle it.
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: But you you you know, we have a data center in this county already.
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: Does anybody know that?
• 48:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we have one data center already.
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: It's on US 30, just outside Booster, between US 30 and the railroad tracks.
• 48:30
  Speaker 3: REMC has a data center there.
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: You've probably seen it and wondered what it was.
• 48:35
  Speaker 3: But um, I'm in favor of data centers.
• 48:38
  Speaker 3: Say if Zimmer had an issue and they needed that kind of energy and that that kind of capability, let them build it.
• 48:46
  Speaker 3: That's that's great.
• 48:47
  Speaker 3: We'll give them incentives to help them do that.
• 48:49
  Speaker 3: If Maple Leaf Farms up north, they they have an issue and they need a data center, you know, let the individual corporations or companies that want to do that fund it, build it, use it.
• 49:00
  Speaker 3: I don't think someone lives in Sydney or Silver Lake really cares about a data center in Atwood.
• 49:05
  Speaker 3: And uh so that's that's my point.
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: You know, and I guess that I would add to that is just, you know, I think we need to be very strategic in how we would look at the data centers.
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: And I think that there's a way for us to really create some local ordinances which would specifically spell out, you know, where and how they could be built in our county.
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: Because I really feel like the the uh the vibe I'm getting from the state, you know, the state would really like to have that control to be able to tell small communities or where these things are going to happen.
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: And I think if we can have an ordinance in place historically, if you have ordinances in place, the the state's been more apt to allow them to stand versus having to fall by their new rules, as well as I think it could be a revenue source that uh could help with some of the other reductions we might be seeing in property tax or other revenue streams.
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: That we, you know, we have to at least be open to the conversation and have a conversation, but it has to be right for our community.
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: So and that might be part of our salvation to whatever comes with Senate Bill One and all the rest of the tax changes.
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: That may be how we can make our our county whole, make every taxing unit whole through those, but we definitely want to be it, we want it to be placed in the right place.
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: We do not want it to be in farm country.
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: I'm pretty adamant about that.
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: And I'm very proud of the fact that we said no.
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: I know there are many people that probably thought no wasn't the right answer, but I looked at the books, I looked at everything, and I'm proud to say that we said no.
• 50:38
  unknown: Right.
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: But I wouldn't say no to all of them.
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna add that copy again.
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: Right place, right time, sure.
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: Be perfect.
• 50:46
  Speaker 5: Yeah, thank you.
• 50:48
  Speaker 5: Um okay, I've got two more questions for you as we wrap up our time here.
• 50:52
  Speaker 5: And and um this is one of my favorite ones that that came in from uh Keith, and he asked, What does Kosciusko County look like in 2045?
• 51:02
  Speaker 5: I would love for you to think about that a minute.
• 51:04
  Speaker 5: That's 20 years from now.
• 51:05
  Speaker 5: And I think about the kids that are attending school in this building here at Lincoln and the other elementary schools in our county.
• 51:12
  Speaker 5: Uh, they will be starting their careers, they'll be starting families, they'll be planting roots.
• 51:18
  Speaker 5: Um if you could just dream a little bit and maybe, you know, put some budget election things aside and just think about what would you love to see 2045 Kosciusko County look like?
• 51:30
  Speaker 3: Uh for me, it'll be really personal.
• 51:33
  Speaker 3: It'll be dark and cold.
• 51:36
  Speaker 3: Very lonely.
• 51:41
  Speaker 3: I'm planning on going by myself, so it's not a big deal.
• 51:46
  Speaker 3: But I've got three children who live in this community.
• 51:50
  Speaker 3: One works for Lake City Vice President, Lake City Bank, one's a tenured teacher, teaches at STEM Academy at Warsaw, uh Washington STEM Academy.
• 52:01
  Speaker 3: Uh highly accomplished young lady.
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: She uh is a professor uh at Grace College occasionally.
• 52:07
  Speaker 3: Uh my youngest son cuts hair with me at the barber shop.
• 52:10
  Speaker 3: And they've got we've got five beautiful grandchildren that are they've just so full of energy.
• 52:18
  Speaker 3: You just can't you just miss them when you're not around them.
• 52:21
  Speaker 3: It's not like this, ah, that ratty grandkid, you know, he's gonna come over for supper tonight.
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: That's not that's not the way it is.
• 52:27
  Speaker 3: And I don't think we want that future for our kids.
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: I think we want our kids to have the same or better than what we had.
• 52:34
  Speaker 3: I think that's a goal of all parents.
• 52:36
  Speaker 3: Whatever that looks like, uh none of us know, none of us can tell.
• 52:40
  Speaker 3: I didn't I didn't know my son would be in high in finance with with the bank.
• 52:45
  Speaker 3: He was a brilliant young man in high school, well behaved, took care of himself.
• 52:49
  Speaker 3: And that's the benefit of having done those things.
• 52:52
  Speaker 3: So if we can train our children up in the way they should go, when they're old, they won't depart from it.
• 52:58
  Speaker 3: But that training is not happening, folks.
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: I I see it in the barber shop all the time.
• 53:04
  Speaker 3: Little boys come in for haircuts, you know, they're two, three, four, five years old, have no idea what left and right is.
• 53:11
  Speaker 3: Up and down.
• 53:12
  Speaker 3: You you mentioned something that was in the news and they have no idea.
• 53:16
  Speaker 3: Mention something they they should be learning in school, and they know stuff because these teachers are doing a tremendous job.
• 53:23
  Speaker 3: I know our public school teachers catch a lot of flack a lot of times, but that's totally undeserved.
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: Those people are dedicated, they love those kids.
• 53:31
  Speaker 3: Like my daughter uh was asked a question recently, uh she'll probably yell at me for saying this, but she flat told them, you know, what you're asking us to do is not reasonable.
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: I have 20 children in front of me all day long.
• 53:46
  Speaker 3: From the time they get there in the morning to all day, lunch, recess, study time.
• 53:51
  Speaker 3: How many of us could do that?
• 53:53
  Speaker 3: But she pay she's patient, persevere, and loving, and that's what it's gonna take to make the future anywhere the way God intended for it to be.
• 54:03
  Speaker 3: And that's for care for one another and take care of one another.
• 54:06
  Speaker 3: And I thank God that my wife and my children do that.
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: Well, I would hope that by 2045 we will have figured out how truly important the fire departments and the MS services are in our community.
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: I struggle with where that's going to wind up in this whole financial picture.
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: Those of you who have been around a while, you know about the volunteer fire departments.
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: Those were brotherhoods, those were people who cared about each other, and then they became your family, and you went, you had dinner with them, and you had all those things that hadn't gave you the warm feelings, and you felt like you were family.
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: And then fortunately, fortunately, we do have people who do that as a full-time job and they receive a paycheck for it, and I'm very grateful for that.
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: But the other part of that is that camaraderie and being able to pull together those people and be sure that we can provide those those services that we desperately need.
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: I mean, I come from an EMS fire department family.
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: My husband was a 50-year fire department person.
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: I ran on the ambulance for 15 years.
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: I have a daughter that ran on the ambulance.
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: I have two grandchildren that are firemen now.
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: And and I just see that if we can't get the money pulled together to make that all work, you're gonna spend a long time waiting on a fire truck, and ain't nobody got time to wait on a fire truck to come to your house.
• 55:40
  Speaker: I think the old adage, leave it better than you found it, really plays into this case.
• 55:45
  Speaker: And you look at where we were when I started working for county government 40 plus years ago, to where we are today, we've come a long way.
• 55:56
  Speaker: And with the economic growth that we've been seeing over the years, um, again, going back to Slate and Autocam a little bit, the more we do an economic development, the better we're gonna leave this community when our term is up and the next folks step in.
• 56:13
  Speaker: Twenty years from now, I would like to see people.
• 56:16
  Speaker: I'll pick on Alan Decker for a minute.
• 56:18
  Speaker: He's just sitting up here and looks bored.
• 56:20
  Speaker: I'd like to see Alan Decker's grandchildren's um grandchildren want to come back here and live and work and raise their family here.
• 56:31
  Speaker: This community is known for families.
• 56:36
  Speaker: And I think family is the most important thing we have.
• 56:41
  Speaker: We have highway departments, we have fire departments, we have EMS services, we have all those, but family is the most important thing we have.
• 56:50
  Speaker: And if your family 20 years from now is willing to move back to this community after they've gone to college or tried something somewhere else to raise their family, that says a lot about that we did everything right that we possibly could.
• 57:04
  Speaker: Economic development keeps driving that because we bring more workforce here, more opportunities for them to have a job, more opportunities for them to make money to raise that family.
• 57:16
  Speaker: And to be quite honest, I mean, I would really like to see the economy as a whole go back to where you could live on one paycheck.
• 57:25
  Speaker: Um, I doubt that we'll ever see that again, but I think that would be something that would be a great thing.
• 57:33
  Speaker: Um, but I want to see this county continue to grow um and to thrive.
• 57:41
  Speaker: And and in in the very end of this, I want it to stay financially stable, to still continue to do those things, um, to be able to work with KEDCO and to be able to work with the commissioners or whoever it might be to allow those things to happen.
• 57:57
  Speaker: So when you do your family does come back to raise their family, they got something to be proud of.
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I I kind of maybe dream big here, but you know, I'd love for our county to be 14 thriving, vibrant communities, not four.
• 58:15
  Speaker 2: You know, that we're we really uh, you know, countywide, we have that success and vibrancy around our county.
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: You know, we have a a a diverse employee employer base, you know, that allows for fulfilling careers for our residents, you know, and allows them to prosper and raise their family with with options for housing and school and quality of life amenities that we know the these younger generations that used to be kind of niceties that you know it was nice if you had a park.
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: Well, in today's world, I mean, with remote work and other things that are going on, you know, these younger generations just really value, and I'm not saying it's a bad thing, they really value the quality of life that they're able to live.
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: And you know, they're willing to even give up something if they're able to have more time to spend with their family.
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: So I really think that we've really got to focus on those things.
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: And I just think if we can create that environment, uh it's it's gonna serve us well in the long run.
• 59:14
  Speaker 5: It's great.
• 59:15
  Speaker 5: Okay, as we uh end our time here, um, the future of Kosciusko County isn't just up to the people sitting on the stage, it's up to all of us.
• 59:26
  Speaker 5: And to face these challenges and to lean into these investments, uh, we know that it's gonna take everyone.
• 59:33
  Speaker 5: So um to Tony's point of leaving it better than we found it, uh, if we could just get a brief answer on what we can as the community do to better engage in the process and help leaving it better than we found it.
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: Well, I think one of the primary things is to educate, to try to learn how these political things work.
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: We're not all really political people.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: We're people who care about our community and really want to see it thrive.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: These jobs are hard.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm telling you, I've been the county assessor, I've been the county auditor, I've been the county treasurer, I've been on the county council, and I'm now a commissioner.
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: I I'm here to tell you these jobs are hard.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: And nobody realizes that you can't just step into these.
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: You have to understand how some of these things work.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: Otherwise, you are not doing anybody a favor getting onto a board or onto anything unless you've done some homework and actually understand what that job is going to be.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: And so for that reason, I'm pretty sure that any one of us here, I see we have a lot of our county employees and a lot of our elected officials in the office, in the in the audience, I guarantee you that any one of us would love to sit down and talk with anybody who is interested in trying to get involved with our county government and to try to understand and to be respectful of those who hold those jobs today.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: They are not, they are not easy.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: They are not for the faint of heart, and they are not something that is I can go if I want, but I don't have to.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: These are jobs where you must show up, you must take an interest, you must do the work, and you must participate in order to be a valuable person to our county.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: And I would love to see a lot of people interested.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: I've always wanted to teach a class about how you could get involved in government.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: Trust me.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 3: The internet's a tremendous uh tool.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 3: But so many times in the last 10 years, so much has happened in the community and in government that's false.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 3: Facebook, man alive, if you're gonna get on Facebook and and talk to your friends and and reunite with classmates and people around the country that you know you you you you like, they're friends of yours, you like to be passionate about that.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 3: That's great.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 3: But boy, so many times I hear so many things on Facebook that just is so far-fetched, and I don't know where they come up with it, but then I have people come to some of our meetings and some of the things they get into.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 3: It's it's controversial.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 3: They what they wanna they want to use what they heard on Facebook as the facts, it's the truth.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 3: 100% they saw it on Facebook.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 3: Um that's a good tool, but I think we need to educate our kids and how to get away from that Facebook mentality.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 3: It's a tool to be used, used properly, it's tremendous.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 3: Use improperly.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 3: You get people who don't understand don't know the facts because they're listening to something that's not factual.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 3: There are people who are not factual.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 3: We deal in facts, and uh, believe me, if one of some of our meetings, if I come up with something that is not right, these guys tell me.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 3: And I love them for that.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 3: I mean, I'm not perfect, I'm not right all the time.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 3: And just most of the time, you're right.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 3: But um it's it's fun I was gonna give it to you.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 3: It's fun to disagree when you know these people care, when they've got a heart for service.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 3: Um, I see all these county employees out here.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 3: I mean, I I talk with them occasionally if I get it get time.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 3: But these guys, uh Matt Sandy, uh Bob Weaver, uh um Mr.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 3: Brown, I mean, they're out there.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 3: We've got people working for us, but when what they're doing is being undermined by things are going on in the community that's face back and uh move back and forth through Facebook and that type of thing that's not factual.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 3: That's that's tough, and that doesn't do anything to help promote the camaraderie and friendship we need in government and in the community.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker: Well, I think that we the commissioners, the council people are here tonight.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker: By the way, there's four other council people out here in the room tonight, Joe Irwin, Will Stockdale, Rachel Rhodes, and Dave Wilkins over there.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker: Um, we're all human beings.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker: And when people come at us in an attack, we're a typical human being.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker: We rear back, we put our fighting gloves on, we're ready to go forward.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker: We welcome constructive criticism.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker: We welcome conversations.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker: If you go to the county's webpage and you look under the elected officials, every one of our phone numbers are there.
• 1:04:39
  Speaker: All you have to do is pick up the phone and call.
• 1:04:43
  Speaker: We make time for coffee.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker: We make time to meet with you and talk with you.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker: But when we feel attacked personally, then we kind of get our feathers ruffled as you would if somebody was attacking you personally.
• 1:04:57
  Speaker: But if you want to be constructive in your criticism, you want to have a conversation, you want to provide input, that's what we need more than anything.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker: And I welcome that to anybody to call any of us at any time.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker: Um, you know, maybe you call this morning and I can't meet you till tomorrow morning or Thursday morning, but I'll be glad to meet you for a cup of coffee somewhere to talk.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker: And I know that the rest of the council would be that way, and I'm sure these three are the same way.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker: So let's work together and not against each other to figure out where we're going to be in 2045.
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 4: Love that.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: So, Tony, you meant you missed Kathy Groninger.
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: She's sitting behind.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: She there, I didn't see her sign.
• 1:05:38
  Speaker: No, Kathy's she's hiding behind the sign.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker: She's hiding behind the billboard, I didn't see her.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker: There you go.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I guess I just like to say, you know, it's as commissioner, it's been such an honor these last nine years that I've been serving as county commissioner.
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 2: And it it is it is a tough job at times.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: You know, it can be, you know, what's the what's uh some of the sayings that I say sometimes it's uh you know it's it's self-inflicted pain um because of an elected official.
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 2: But uh but uh you know, I guess first of all, I just want to thank everybody for coming this evening.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: You know, it's really great to see you guys come out and listen to us talk on such a beautifully, beautiful evening here on this fall, fall afternoon.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 2: But uh, you know, I guess the thing that I would say is, you know, find your passion.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: You know, what are your passion about?
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 2: Look for that, lean into it, volunteer and serve in that area.
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 2: You know, I think it's really easy to want to have an opinion about something when you've really not leaned into something and understand it and worked in it or volunteered in it.
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 2: And I think there are so many opportunities in small towns like our small community that we are, that people are constantly looking for people to be willing to serve in in different facets uh in in different organizations.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 2: And and I just think there's just so much more that we can accomplish together, working together uh versus you know working against one another.
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 2: So just appreciate uh everybody being here this evening and and don't hesitate to reach out.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 2: Our names and numbers are on the on the uh brochure tonight.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 2: If you know those are our cell phones that uh are open to calls.
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 2: So thank you.
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 5: Excellent.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 5: Thank you all so much.
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 5: Bob, go ahead.
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 5: Final thought.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 3: I just want to say thank you as well.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 5: Yeah, perfect.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 5: Thank you all so much for your service.
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 5: Thank you for um the ways that that you give of your uh personal time, your families uh to serve the community.
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 5: Thank you to all the elected officials who are here.
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 5: Uh, and thanks for opening up tonight.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 5: Can we give our panel a hand?
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 5: And then also I'd like to just give a quick hand to um the Lincoln staff that opened the building for us and stayed late for us.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 5: Can we just thank them for tonight as well?
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 5: And then thank you all for making the time to come out tonight and those that are online uh catching up.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 5: Thank you for doing that.
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 5: Um so we're gonna open up the gym floor.
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 5: We'll let the folks that are working the tables come down to their spot and then please come on down and uh continue the conversation.
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 5: Thank you so much.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 5: Thank you again for joining us for this special episode of the ALL IN Kosciusko Podcast.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 5: And I want to give a special thanks to our commissioners and county council for their participation in this special event.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 5: To stay in touch with all of the people, places, and progress happening in Kosciusko County, make sure to check out the website Allinkosciusko.com.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 5: Thanks so much.